ACTi
Knowledge Base
Category: Installation & Configuration Note Sub-category: Integration
Model: All Firmware: N/A
Software: N/A Author:
Published: 2009/12/30 Reviewed: 2011/11/30
How to Integrate Camera Live View into Web Application?
Contents
Introduction Applications
Live View page introduction ActiveX control technology
How to install ActiveX control to your system Start building application with sample code Display PTZ camera’s live view and control Display more channels live view
How to show live view on other browsers FAQ
Introduction
You may want to embed your camera's live image into your specially designed webpage, in order to let users see the live view anywhere, e.g. live traffic on highway, live view from famous tourist attractions, have a look at pets and see what they are doing, etc. User can view the video on various devices via different internet types, such as wired LAN, wireless LAN, 3G network. This article explains how it all works and how to set it up.
Applications
You can use browsers or multimedia players to display the live streaming.
General browsers: Microsoft Internet explorer, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome,etc. Multimedia players: Quick time, VLC, Media Player,etc.
Browsers Internet explorer
Firefox Safari Google
Chrome ACTi Camera Video/Audio/All
control
Video/Audio Video/Audio Video/Audio
Note You need to
install ActiveX control automatically.
You need to use the URL command
http://ip:port/cgi-bin/cmd/encoder?GET_STREAM Please refer to another article:
How to Watch Live Video Using iPhone and iPad
Multimedia players
VLC Quick Time Other Application
ACTi Camera
Video/Audio Video/Audio Video/Audio/PTZ
Note RTSP URL:
rtsp://IP_address:RTSP port or
rtsp://account:password@IP_address:RTSP
if you use RTSP, the camera will use UDP to send the image, please make sure there is no firewall between camera and player. ACTi has software NVR can offer more functions and good quality. ACTi will not guarantee third party software solution can work always due to they may update library or have quality concern.
ACTi “Mobile GO!” can work on iphone/iPAD.
Web server
ACTi NVR server
ACTi
Broadcast server ACTi “Mobile Go!” Scenario 1: Show live streaming on IE browser
Scenario 2: To embed multimedia player on html file for verious browsers
Scenario 3: Get snapshot from camera and show it on browser directly.
Scenario 4: Broadcast server will send live stream to verious browser or target devices, and cameras can keep live streaming to software NVR for recording.
Note** Broadcast server spec to be defined depends on potential number of clients using the service, if you want to understand more about broadcast server, please contact ACTi sales or can visit ACTi website to read “Mobile Server” in ACTi Utility first.
Note** “ACTi MobileGo” is available on iTunes, it allows you to view and control cameras on iPad, iPhone and iPod!
If you want to understand “Mobile Go!”, please visit ACTi website to read “ACTi MobileGo!” in ACTi Utility.
In the following page, we will teach you how to design the html page for live view on IE browser.
Network
Live View page Introduction
If your browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer, you need to install the ActiveX control on your computer. This document contains information about how to use ActiveX control to integrate the camera live view window into web application. User can embed a camera live view window into web application, or create a customized live view web page.
ActiveX Control Technology
ActiveX controls — small program building blocks — can serve to create distributed applications that work over the Internet through Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. Examples include customized applications for gathering data, viewing certain kinds of files, and displaying animation.
ACTi camera also included ActiveX control “nvEPLMedia.cab” into firmware, when user connect to camera’s web page, the Internet Explorer will allow embedding the ActiveX control, then user can view the video streaming in camera’s web page.
If you want to embed our ActiveX control into your specially designed webpage, the ActiveX control “ nvUnifiedControl.ocx” can work with all ACTi cameras whatever the camera firmware is earlier or not.
Here is latest ACTi camera’s ActiveX control.
ACTi Camera
ActiveX control Digital signature Internet Explorer
ACM
File Name: nvUnifiedControl.ocx Version: 1.2.94.1 Date: 11/7/2012 Valid from 9/4/2012 to 9/24/2015 32-bit version TCM KCM D/E/B/I
Internet Explorer's default security settings require that any software available for download must have a digital signature before download can occur, the file types which will need digital signature, such as .exe, .cab, .dll, .ocx, .msi, .xpi.
How to install ActiveX control to your system
Start building application with sample code for IE browser
You can find sample code attached to this article, named as “LiveDemoSample.htm”. This sample is a useful example to set up a live demo page for guest viewers.
We will highlight the necessary modification which can help you to get successful preview with this sample.
Line 3: Modify the display of the web page title bar <TITLE>ACTi - Live Demo</TITLE>
Line47: Modify the camera IP address NV1.MediaSource = "10.1.1.85";
Line49-50: Modify the camera User Name and Password NV1.MediaUserName = "Admin"; NV1.MediaPassword = "123456";
Line51-56: Modify the camera port setting NV1.HttpPort = "80"; NV1.RegisterPort = "6000"; NV1.ControlPort = "6001"; NV1.StreamingPort = "6002"; NV1.MulticastPort = "5000"; NV1.RTSPPort = "7070";
Line72: Modify the live view time. This setting is useful to limit the access time for each connection, you can set this value as 0 if you wish to provide a permanent connection.
var nLivingTime = 0;
Line121: Modify the URL which locates the ActiveX control component. You may choose to host this file on your website, or let your user download from ACTi server. If you wish to host ActiveX control yourself, just replace the bold text with your URL. If you do not wish to host it yourself, you can leave the settings unchanged to let your users download from ACTi server. Please do not modify other settings in this tag.
<OBJECT id="NV1" codeBase="http://actiftp.hosting4less.com/ACTIGENERAL/ AP&Manual/Live%20Demo/nvUnifiedControl.ocx" height="480" width="720" data=
Display PTZ camera’s live view and control
You can find sample code attached to this article, named as “LiveDemoSample_forPTZcamera.htm”.
This sample is a useful example to set up a live demo page for guest viewers.
We will highlight the necessary modification which can help you to get successful preview with this sample.
Line 3: Modify the display of the web page title bar <TITLE>ACTi - PTZ camera Live Dem</TITLE>
Line47: Modify the camera IP address NV1.MediaSource = "10.1.1.85";
Line49-50: Modify the camera User Name and Password NV1.MediaUserName = "Admin"; NV1.MediaPassword = "123456";
Line51-56: Modify the camera port setting NV1.HttpPort = "80"; NV1.RegisterPort = "6000"; NV1.ControlPort = "6001"; NV1.StreamingPort = "6002"; NV1.MulticastPort = "5000"; NV1.RTSPPort = "7070";
Line58-64: Modify the camera’s PTZ setting. The example is for ACM-8511. For KCM zoom camera, you can use Vender=“SONY” Protocol=”VISCA” or Vender=“PELCO” Protocol=”PELCO-D”, it depends what PTZ Vendor setting on camera.
Line120: Modify the live view time. This setting is useful to limit the access time for each connection, you can set this value as 0 if you wish to provide a permanent connection.
var nLivingTime = 0;
Line169: Modify the URL which locates the ActiveX control component. You may choose to host this file on your website, or let your user download from ACTi server. If you wish to host ActiveX control yourself, just replace the bold text with your URL. If you do not wish to host it yourself, you can leave the settings unchanged to let your users download from ACTi server. Please do not modify other settings in this tag.
<OBJECT id="NV1" codeBase="http://actiftp.hosting4less.com/ACTIGENERAL/ AP&Manual/Live%20Demo/nvUnifiedControl.ocx" height="480" width="720" data=
"data:application/x-oleobject;base64,P2/zpuA6i0WvxKqCVl4L+BAHAABhJAAAzhgAAA==" classid="CLSID:F8E691A0-C92E-4E42-9CDA-62FC07A9483B" VIEWASTEXT>
Display more channels live view
You can refer to the sample code attached to this article, named as “LiveDemoSample_4channelPreview.htm”.
This sample is a useful example to set up a live demo page for guest viewers.
How to show live view on other browsers
Due to other browsers do not support ActiveX, such as Firefox, Google Chrome,etc. You can input the URL command to show camera’s video.
Please refer to another article: How to Watch Live Video Using iPhone and iPad
http://www.acti.com/support/KnowledgeBase/outside/detail.asp?KB_ID=KB20091222001
If the camera supports RTSP, you can plug-in media application to show live video, the camera will send the image with dynamic UDP port, please make sure there is no firewall between camera and live view site, here is an example which we use Quicktime application.
There is a sample code attached to this article, named as “LiveDemoSample_plugin_quicktime.html”.
This sample is a useful example to set up a live demo page for guest viewers.
We will highlight the necessary modification which can help you to get successful preview with this sample.
Line 2: Modify the display of the web page title bar <TITLE>ACTi - Live Demo</TITLE>
Line9 : Modify the camera IP address and RTSP port
<param value="rtsp://172.16.26.80:7070" name="qtsrc"/>
Line18: Modify the camera IP address and RTSP port qtsrc="rtsp://172.16.26.80:7070"
FAQ
Q1: I have bandwidth limitation, if the live view is slow, how should I do?
You can use snapshot and upload the camera’s snapshot to FTP server, then your web page can get file from FTP server directly by the time. ACTi camera supports Event Handler function, it can upload snapshot file to FTP server directly.
Or you can select the camera which supports dual stream or multiple streams, then user can use different resolution and frame rate, so the recording will keep on good quality ,and the live view can use lower quality to save the bandwidth.
Q2: What should I think about when embedding the live view in my website?
You may concern some factors
1. Bandwidth limitation on your server site and remote user site.
2. Offer remote user control function on the camera, such as PTZ and record functions 3. Display live view on different browsers, such as IE, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome. 4. Remote User will use various devices, such as PDA, iphone.
Q3: Why I cannot see the image?
Please check if there is any firewall to block the video. ACTi cameras send image via two TCP ports, user can configure them from camera’s web configurator.
If you want to use RTSP protocol, we provide two ways to send video image. One is RTP over UDP, camera will use dynamic UDP port to send image.
Second is RTP over TCP (the player site need to have RTSP and RTP over HTTP Tunneling ), camera will use HTTP port to send image.
Camera Streaming Type Camera will use the ports
TCP TCP Control and Streaming ports
(default is 6001 for control and 6002 for stream)
RTP over UDP
(player site may use RTSP protocol)
RTSP port and Dynamic UDP port
RTP over UDP
(player site need to have RTSP and RTP over HTTP Tunneling)
